


Negotiations

by mandalorianed



Series: Chiaroscuro [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Banter, F/M, See notes for content warnings, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Sexual Tension, back at it again making all your faves jewish, bruce wayne is jewish and i will DIE on this hill do you hear me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 15:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19088110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandalorianed/pseuds/mandalorianed
Summary: She likes it this way. Him. Her. The moon overhead. And the exasperated looks he keeps giving her because he's a damn stick in the mud, and he likes to pretend that he doesn't know how to smile.





	Negotiations

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the middle of writing four (4) different stories for this 'verse, and somehow this one—the one I started last!—is the one that's done first. For any of you who've read through Chiaroscuro before, I've done some housecleaning over there, removing a fic that doesn't really fit with where I'm planning to take the series. There's going to be a lot more coming in the semi-near future. But, of course, this is a stand alone fic, and reading Chiaroscuro isn't at all necessary to understand it.
> 
> This is set a hell of a lot earlier than anything else in the series, right near the beginning of Bruce's career as Batman. Characterization is just an unholy bastardization of everything, and it probably owes more to [Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/series/440926) than it does to anything in DC's actual canon. And yes, I did write this entire story for the sake of the afikoman joke.
> 
> Also, as a heads up, there is a little bit of an age gap between Bruce and Selina here. She's 18, he's 21, and it's dealt with a bit in the text, but if that squicks you out, you might want to pass on this one.

Batman was glaring at her. "Cat."

"Yes?" She cocked her head, favored him with a bright, guileless smile. "Present and accounted for."

"What are you doing," he ground out.

They were crouched side by side on a rooftop. He was watching a pair of would-be muggers get frog marched into a police car. One of them had to be guided in, depth perception out of whack due to the rapidly swelling black eye Batman had given him. She, of course, was just there to watch _him_. She told him so.

"That isn't what I meant." A pause. Then a growled, "Stop that," as he stood up to his full height, knocking away the hand she had been using to pet one of the little bat ears on his cowl.

"I'm glad you're continuing your war on fun," she said, standing as well. As assertive gestures went, it wasn’t much of anything, seeing as he was still at least a foot and a half taller than her. "Seems a worthy goal alongside your crusade to clear the streets of murderous drug dealers. I applaud you."

He was glaring at her. She couldn't see his eyes, but she knew the look at this point.

"There's sensitive machinery housed there," he said, as if he hadn't just head-butted a man.

She cocked her hip. "I'm sure. And they're also very cute, so you're two for two so far."

A tic in his jaw, as if he were grinding his teeth. "I’m sure you have something better you could be doing.”

"Well," she hummed noncommittally. "I suppose I could go and commit crime, if you really wanted me to."

"You know that isn't what I meant."

" Sure." She stepped forward, invading his personal space. He immediately froze, tense in every line of his body as she stepped right up next to him. And he really was much too tall. She had to crane her neck a little to keep eye contact. She let the moment stretch a little longer, then laid a hand on his chest, not quite low enough to be inappropriate. "I usually do."

"Cat."

Warning tone again, but softer now. He took her wrist—he could easily hold both her wrists in one hand—and moved her hand away. Last week, he’d bruised her ribs when he'd pinned her down to cuff her. She'd been robbing the mayoral mansion with a few of Penguin's goons for backup, and she'd been struggling like a cornered lion all the while, so she didn't really hold it against him. She didn’t even think he knew, thought he might feel bad if he did. But in this he was always terribly gentle. His hand didn't linger once he'd removed her, and he crossed his arms across his chest. Didn't step back, though, but that might just be a weird masculine power play. Probably not, but it was hard to tell with him sometimes.

"And again." She crossed her arms to match him. "War on fun."

"I'm too old for you." Still gentle.

"You're not that old," she said with a scoff.

"I'm old enough."

She gave him a very obvious once over. He couldn't be much older than 20. Maybe a touch borderline, but she was 18 now, and it wasn't like he was the one pursuing her.

"Fine," she said with a very put upon sigh. She took a step backwards, then whirled behind him, her back pressed against his for a moment. He stiffened. She came around to his other side. "I guess that's that, then."

And with that she dove from the roof, breaking her fall with a well-placed whip lashed to a fire escape, before landing in a roll. She popped back to her feet and favored the vague, shadowy figure two stories above her with a wink, before she took off deeper into the twisting alleys of Gotham. He could be surprisingly easy to fluster sometimes. He hadn't even noticed her lifting something off his belt.

* * *

She didn’t go all that far, seeing as that wasn’t even the point, and he caught up to her as she was inspecting her prize, perched on top of a busted air-conditioning unit. It put her high enough up that, for once, they were nearly eye to eye. It was a tracker, the thing she’d fished out of one of the pouches on the back of his belt. Smaller than her palm, made of dark metal. There was an elegance to the design, as there was with all his tech. She wondered if his designer took commission work. She wondered if _he_ was his designer, and if he’d unbend enough to let her borrow a thing or two.

He landed in a crouch on the roof, drowning in his own shadow. The moon was full tonight, and, for once, the sky was clear. Moonlight drenched the roof in silver, but the moon was behind him as he rose back to his full height and stalked towards her.

“Cat.”

There was actual anger in his voice now. Quiet, leashed for the moment, but still there. She closed the tracker up in her fist and drew it back against her chest. He was even with her now, close enough that he could touch her. She was sitting cross-legged, and his cape kept blowing against her knee.

“You need to work on your situational awareness,” she told him, ignoring the hand he’d extended towards her, palm up. Universal sign for “gimme.” “You didn’t even notice that I lifted it.”

“Clearly I did, or else I wouldn’t be here.”

“Sure, but if these were ideal conditions, I would have disappeared into the crowd, and you’d never have seen me again.”

“Those are ideal conditions?” There was a dry irony in his voice. She ran back over her words again.

“Ideal in general terms,” she corrected primly. “Ideal pickpocketing conditions. For pickpockets. Specifically.”

He beckoned towards her with two fingers on his outstretched hand. She considered them, and then sniffed dismissively and turned her face away, no longer meeting his eyes.

“Well, I think we need to negotiate ransom terms first.”

“Negotiate—” He cut himself off, frustration dropping his voice out of the blank, practiced growl he always spoke with, rendering him shockingly human for a moment. And then, quietly enough that he clearly hadn’t meant for her to hear it, he muttered, “This isn’t a damn afikoman.”

She laughed at that, loud and genuine, and his head jerked back towards her, thoroughly startled. He put so much effort into rendering himself a cypher, but this was a rare glimpse beneath the mask to whatever man lay underneath. Was he remembering his childhood, she wondered, or had he been invited to some seder somewhere along the way? She’d only ever been to one once, the only gentile at the table, but it was a fond memory. For his part, he didn’t laugh, but she saw the closest thing to a real smile she’d ever seen on his face, which he quickly covered with his hand.

“I don’t suppose you’d take chocolate,” he asked wryly, face schooled back into neutrality.

“I would, actually.” She tilted her head a little impishly. “Do you have that on your belt as well?”

“Unfortunately no. Do you have a secondary price?”

She smirked, leaned forward a little, and then tapped her cheek with one elegant finger. He sighed.

“… Cat.”

“Oh, please.” She leaned back on one hand, the other still tightly closed around the tracker. “It’s just a little peck on the cheek. Surely that’s tame enough to preserve your fragile old man heart.”

There was that not-quite-a-smile again. And then it was gone, and his face was serious once more. She had a feeling that, if she could see his eyes, they would be narrowed, but she didn’t think he’d be able to manage to summon the heat to really scorch her. Her smirk grew, she couldn’t help it, and she cocked an eyebrow as if to say, _So?_

A frustrated exhale, and then he leaned forward, aiming for her cheek. She shifted at the last second, of course, catching his lips with her own. He really could do an incredible stone statue imitation, and as soon as her lips touched his, he froze. An exasperated sigh almost escaped her, but she held it back and shifted instead. Kept it chaste and tender, resisted the urge to be all tongue and teeth the was she’d been the last few times she’d managed to steal a kiss from him. Tilted her head a little bit. Brought her free hand up to cup his face. For some reason, that was what did it. She brushed her thumb gently across his cheek, and he all but melted into her, leaning into her hand and finally kissing her back. One hand fell to the curve of her hip, tensed as if he was considering sliding it around to the small of her back and yanking her against him. She wished he would, knew he wouldn’t.

For another moment, she savored it. And then she pulled back, lifting his hand from her hip in the same movement and folding the tracker into it as she pushed it back towards him. And that was supposed to be it. It was supposed to be a dramatic moment, followed by a quick exit stage left, except that as she drew back, he made this faint, barely audible whine. And for that brief moment, there was such a look of desperate longing on his face that her chest contracted as if someone had put it in a vice. It was blink-and-you-miss-it quick, and, before she could even fully process it, it was gone, replaced with the mask of stony indifference he usually wore.  He turned away in a swirl of cloak, and then he was the one who made the dramatic exit, straight off the side of the building. A moment later, she saw him land on another rooftop a bit further down the street before he disappeared into the shadows, leaving her staring dumbly after him.

“Damn it,” she whispered quietly, her voice interrupting the moonlit quiet. “This wasn’t supposed to be a feelings thing, Selina.”


End file.
